Sunday, November 23, 2014

A friend was glad she
shot a deer and shared her excitement and exuberant joy all over town. First
the antlers appeared on Facebook and then she shared the photos in person as
well as the detailed tale. Every move she made to harvest meat was epic and
every episode shone clear from her adrenaline-soaked memory to my staid antique
composure. I tried to be uncharacteristically demonstrative, but doubtless
failed. At any rate, she said, “You want a haunch?” The query was answered in
the affirmative and so it came in white paper with her presence to instruct the
not-so-sharp wielder of sharpness, me.

I have cut up venison
before. Venison is a name for deer we got from the French. We do not like to
say we are having dead deer for supper so we say venison, just like when we don’t
want to use the Anglo-Saxon “sweat” we use the French, “perspiration.” I got
two nice roasts, a few good steaks and a bunch of stew meat from the generous
gift. What was left of the meat, gristled, undesirable, useless, hanging onto
the bone like moss on cypress, became late night repast for whatever roamed the
nearby woods. I served it quietly and with great humility, hurrying away before
some imagined spot-lighter could illumine me and take me for a sylvan ungulate,
and I mean take me in both senses of the word take. We expressed our gratitude
to our marksman, that is, markswoman friend and she departed gleeful to have
shared the meat she herself had acquired through skill and hardihood and
endurance in the deep woods she called, as is common around here, the deer
woods.

Wouldn’t it make the
prolific squirrels a bit indignant if they knew we were designating their woods
as deer woods? I never heard a soul say squirrel woods, and no one ever uttered
crow woods or armadillo woods. And, I doubt the deer have sense enough to be
proud of the undeserved nomenclature. Why not call them animal woods, or game
woods or just plain woods. I would.

Speaking of armadillos,
if they would just learn to keep their cool and not jump they would live a lot
longer. We see so many armadillos sleeping with their fathers, to use a
biblical euphemism, in the middle of the road because they jump up and get
clobbered. If they would stay low, they would survive. (Staying low may be good
advice for many of us). I like armadillos even though they carry leprosy. They
are armored possums and resemble them on the underside. The armadillo sow
always has four young at a time and they are always of the same gender,
because, I’m told, they come from a single four-chambered egg. I also read that
these primitive creatures cannot swim. When they cross a stream, they walk
turtle-like on the bottom, having the ability to hold their breath for a long
time. Maybe that’s why you don’t see many of them in Mississippi.

I heard a man in Drew
County say the best hamburger he ever had was in Amarillo and the best barbecued
armadillo he ever had was in Hamburg. Go figure.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

A friend of mine asked
me to consult my Oxford English Dictionary (OED) on the word “fake.” He did not
tell me why. The OED is a magnificent 13 volume work of English scholarship
that gives the first known usage of a word and then traces the changes in
meaning. For example, the first usage of the word “Lord” was “Hlafweard” which
meant loaf-warden or loaf-guardian. The OED traces the way the meaning changed
as well as the pronunciation evolution.

So, I looked up the
word “fake” for my friend. Even though there is a Germanic word, “fegen” that
meant to sweep or thrash, the OED claims an obscure origin for “fake.” The work
speculates that it may be Native American, as Captain John Smith used the word
in 1607 to mean a fold or coil of rope. It was not until the middle of the 19th
Century that the word was used in the sense in which we use it, as in “theatrical
fake.”

How could a word that
meant fold become something that meant being false or hypocritical? Well, maybe
we can be faked out by folds because one is just like the other. Or, similarly,
maybe coils of rope all look alike and one can be a false version of the other.
Or, and this is admittedly a wild speculation, maybe the fold in a theater
curtain came to represent theatrical fakes, or actors as we would call them.

Anyway, I started
thinking about fakes and hypocrites. What is it to be one? I suppose it is
looking one way on the outside and being another way on the inside. When I was
learning to drive the big military trucks in Germany, one of my shotgun riders,
Thornton, noticed that I was being extremely cautious and nervous. He said, “Ford,
just fake it. Act like you know what you are doing and you will be able to
drive this thing like a pro.” I took his advice, and the fake became the real.
So, at least in that case, I suppose being a kind of hypocrite was more or less
non-blameworthy.

In the same way, when I
started teaching college classes at Auburn, I really did not know what I was doing.
I had obviously observed a lot of college teachers, so I had a variety of role
models to imitate, but I did not really know how to teach. So, I thought back
to what Thornton told me about driving a truck. I acted like I had been
teaching classes for years on end and the students seemed to believe it. I
mean, I didn’t lie verbally, but my behavior misrepresented my inner
insecurity. I gained confidence after I realized that the students did not know
what was going on in my inner man.

It makes me think of
Samuel of old. He was supposed to anoint a new king for Israel, because old
King Saul had been disobedient. He was sent to Jesse’s house in Bethlehem, a
man with eight sons. He knew one of them was to be king but he didn’t know
which one. When the first one came out, he looked every inch a king, so Samuel
wanted to anoint him. But the Lord let him know that He looked on the inside,
not like men who look on the outside. At length, Samuel anointed little David,
a ruddy shepherd boy who looked nothing like a king at that point. You can’t
tell a book by its cover.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

I was fascinated by the
shepherd and his flock that was allowed onto Hahn Air Base in Germany. When the
rugged man and his ruddy son led the flock through the main gate, I could hear
the bleats from the sheep and murmurs from both guys. I think they must have
been calling the sheep by name, carefully giving instructions to the wooly mass
as it spread hungrily through the grass just inside the base.

It was incongruous to witness
such an archaic scene where ordinarily one could only see complex military equipment
roaring about. But, according to the base commander, letting the sheep in from
time to time was cheaper than mowing and the fertilizer was free. Thus, the
military leadership saved the taxpayers money while beautifying the base as
well as providing a very peaceful pastoral scene for the GIs.

The shepherd and his
boy both wielded staffs with crooks on the end. I saw the elder shepherd use
his a time or two for something other than a walking stick. Occasionally, he
would reach out with the crook and gather some of the younger and dumber lambs
in closer to the flock. Sometimes he would encourage the dilatory with the
other end of his staff. The lad used his on an unruly puppy that was slowly
learning the trade so I was satisfied that the staff could serve as a weapon.
After all, David of old was said to have killed wild animals to keep them off
his sheep.

The symbol of a
Christian bishop is a shepherd’s staff. The word “bishop” means “overseer” and,
as such, his job is to reach out and gather people in, encourage them with the
other end and perhaps even to do what Christians call spiritual warfare. So,
the shepherd’s staff is a great symbol for what the bishop does. Most of us
have witnessed processionals either in person or on television with the bishop
in the lead carrying an elaborate silvered and bejeweled staff. What the scene
says is that this person is a shepherd of the flock, ready to gather, encourage
and protect.

Once when I was working
on a military project near an open area on the base, I got an up close look at
lunchtime for the shepherd and his lad. They spread a large rough cloth at the
edge of a hardwood draw and reclined on their sides to eat some strong-smelling
cheese and each drank a little beer from a “snap-cap” bottle. The dogs reclined
nearby, casting lustful looks towards the cheese and bread, but they never got
a bite. Occasionally the ever-alert shepherds would call out something and the
designated sheep would react obediently. If there was any rebellion, they would
send the dogs on a mission the animals relished. I had learned to say “it is a
nice day” in German, so I said it to the shepherds. The younger replied in
slightly accented English that they did not speak much German. They were Dutch.

Oh well. Whatever their
nationality, I enjoyed watching them ply their ancient trade and learned
something about why Christian bishops carry a staff.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Somnambulism could have
cost my life when I was a kid. Now that I am old, it could have saved my life.
Let me explain by telling you a story. Ice-laden trees beat my house and truck and
outbuildings up in the 2000 ice storm so I have been wary of looming limbs ever
since. There is a tall pine with some kind of non-healing wound right outside
my bedroom. I called the tree cutting man to come take it down and to trim an
oak on my yard that is nudging the steeple of the church next door.

This action takes care
of two problems borne in upon me by nature: one, I hope I will quit worrying
about that pine pinning my wife and me to eternity in the middle of the night;
two, maybe the church people will stop looking at the steeple, then me and
shaking their heads. Thus, I will preserve my life and that of my wife and
return to the good graces of the congregation. It was an expensive process, but
well worth it. I can remain in the land of the living with my reputation as a
problem-solver, such as it was, relatively unblemished.

Now, here is the
problem that could have saved my life a long time ago. When I was a kid, a
friend and I built an extravagant treehouse in a sweet gum. I wanted to take up
residence there, even sleep there in that primordial nest. My parents would not
allow sleeping up there because they were familiar with my tendency to sleep-walk.
So, somnambulism may have killed me as a kid and saved me more recently. For
example, what if I had been sleep-walking when the pine outside my bedroom finally
collapsed. I would have lived! I just hope my wife would have been up as well,
trying to convince me I was dreaming, thus escaping the calamity.

Actually, I have not
ambled in my sleeping state in quite a few years. I am very glad that I sleep
more soundly now. One night when I was a teenager, I had a car that I parked on
the street on a hill. I was always careful to turn the wheel so that it was
lodged against the curb. But, somehow in my sleep I thought the car was rolling
off down the hill and I was on the floorboard looking for the brake. In the
real world, I was on the floor working the shuttle of an old sewing machine,
making a lot of racket. Pop came into the room to see what the matter was. I
said, in my sleep, “My car is rolling off down the hill.” He looked out the
window and said, “Boy, that car ain’t going nowhere. Get back in the bed.”

I obeyed, but it took
some five minutes for me to figure out that I had been dreaming. In summary, as
an erstwhile sleepwalker, I could have been in danger. But as an old man, a
little sleep walking may have saved me. And my wife.